Whale Rider Response Questions

1. One situation where Koro ignored signs of Pais ability to lead was when she was eavesdropping and looking in to one of the lessons through a window and one of the boys came out. They started to fight using sticks as taiahas. Pai was able to succeed and knock it out of the boys hands. Koro came out and saw this but just got upset. Another situation was when she was able to start the motor with the rope that Koro said was a piece of crap. He went to get a new one and came back to see the motor running and only told her that was a dangerous thing for her to do.
2. Since Pai was not able to recieve lessons about taiaha from her grandfather, she decided to ask her uncle. Rawiri used to be very good at it and even won a trophy, but had not done it in years. When he began teaching her, he became a new man and more involved.
3. When Pai walks alone towards the big whale, I think she realizes who she is and what she needs to become.
4. When Pai is in the hospital, they know Koro has changed his attitude towards her because we see that she is wearing the whale tooth necklace which he found out Pai had retrieved from the water. One could also tell his attitude had changed because of the emotions he expressed through his face.
5. The significance of the waka is to voyage out on the water and connect with ancestors. The part that struck me the most was how dressed up everyone was. The people all seemed to be wearing traditional clothing and chanting in Maori. It showed the togetherness of the Whangara people.

Project 2 - Artist Statement

For project two, my group and I chose the medium of a recipe book to depict the Wicker Park neighborhood in Chicago. The book is made of different color construction paper and held together by brown twine pieces. The cover reads “Wicker Park Recipe Book” and on one side, lying vertically, is our gleaned object- a red ribbon that was tied around a cement pot in the park. When you open to the first page, it has the recipe for “Resident Soup” with its ingredients and directions underneath. There are also pictures of the ingredients scattered- such as, a woman in high heels, a man playing guitar, and friends playing basketball. If you turn to the next page, you’ll find a recipe for “Wicker Park Stir Fry.” The stir fry includes the trendy retail stores, bakeries, bookstores, any sort of shop you can find in the neighborhood. The pictures for this particular one show Reckless Records, Mojo Spa, and a vintage sign we found in one of the windows. On the third page is the “Wicker History Cake.” As you can tell by the name, this recipe includes all the bits and pieces of the neighborhoods background. There is a picture we found of Wicker Park in the mid to late 1800s and a photo we took of the statue of Wicker. This book is all hand-made and hand-written and all of the pictures inside are the pictures we took when we went to visit Wicker Park, except for the one from the 1800s of course!
The first decision we encountered was what neighborhood to choose. I have been to Wicker Park a number of times with my mom, aunt, and cousins. They like to go to different neighborhoods and explore the shopping and restaurants and I love to tag along. My group members haven’t really been exposed to that neighborhood so I thought it would be fun. I would learn more details about a neighborhood that I otherwise would think nothing of, and my partners would see a different part of Chicago. Our next decision was what medium to choose. A recipe book seemed to make the most sense. We would be able to each do our part and show the make-up of Wicker Park in a simpler form. The next thing to decide was where and when we were going to meet. We all have different schedules for work and school so we had to find a day that we were all off, which happened to be a Sunday. Also meeting at the actual park seemed to be the most practical. We were all pretty easy-going and communicated well. We didn’t have too many problems deciding who would do what part of the recipe book.
What is the relationship between the realities and perceptions of a community, among what communities are, what they believe themselves to be, and what they wish they were? As soon someone steps off at the Damen blue line stop, and sees the view above Milwaukee Avenue or even as soon as they step out on the street, they can judge that this is a very trendy neighborhood. Wicker Park shows itself as a colorful, historic but hip neighborhood. From the pictures in our recipe book, and even in the ingredients, you can see how the people dress and what the stores look like. It’s almost as if a shop that weren’t vintage or cater to hipsters’ style would not blossom in this neighborhood.
The message of our recipe book is to show the personality of Wicker Park. Chicago is made up of many neighborhoods- big, small, ghetto, upscale, and many different ethnicities. I hope that the audience found out some new information and got a feel of how the Wicker Park community is.
For this project, we could have had more “recipes” instead of just generalizing the community into three separate categories. We did however, make our recipes in a clever way and different from everyone else’s recipes- we used metaphorical ingredients. I feel this really shows the make-up instead of using actual ingredients for real meals.

Group Creative Brief

1. The project will be on Wicker Park, and the medium we will use will be we will be making a "wicker basket."

2. The basket will contain all the different ethnic groups that live in the Wicker Park area.

3. Our project will address the guiding questions: What is the relationship between the realities and perceptions of a community, among what communities are, what they believe themselves to be, and what they wish they were? How are the images and imagination of a community generated? We will address these guiding questions by showing the many groups of people that make up the community and how this community really is compared to what people think this community is.

4. The message of the project is that there are many sides to a community, and what makes the community what it is, is the collective of people there. We want our audience to get a bit of history about Wicker Park, but also to understand how and why it has become what it is now.

5. The only thing as of now which has influenced our project is gift baskets gave us the idea for the wicker basket.

Creative Brief

1. My goals and objectives for this project are to create something that shows the make-up of our neighborhood, Wicker Park and also learn more about the history not only about Wicker Park but Chicago as a whole.
2. The guiding questions I'd like to focus on are: What makes this neighborhood stand out? What ethnicity are the majority of the people who live here? Who is Wicker and why is this park/neighborhood named after him? What are the obligations of a group to its members? How are the images and imagination of a community generated?
3. We will include pictures of the people from this neighborhood and hopefully talk/interview them.
4. I want my audience to understand what type of neighborhood this is and why it is a part of Chicago.
5. For this project, I can provide creative ideas, provide some personal information on Wicker Park as well as other in-depth research.

The Gleaners and I

1. The most surprising about this film was learning how much is wasted and how much is picked up.
2. Varda compares this film to gleaning because you are slowly gathering the information on this topic as you keep watching, just as you would glean anything else whether it's food or objects.
3. The images of gleaning by Millet and Van Gogh have two or three people out in the fields together whereas Varda presents the gleaners independently.

Project 2

The choice of neighborhood would be Wicker Park and using the medium of a recipe book.
Two things I already know about this neighborhood is it is good for doing some trendy shopping and the Damen blue line stop lets you off at the intersection of Damen, Milwaukee, and North, which is part of the Wicker Park area. I'd like to learn more about its ethnic make-up and what this neighborhoods exact boundaries are.